


Apart from Me

by luteced



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/F, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:52:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luteced/pseuds/luteced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What was enough when I was without you will never be enough again, now that I've known you.” Modern day zombie apocalypse AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Festering

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Apart from Me" by the Avett Brothers.  
> I started with a high school AU and then I thought, "naaaah. Apocalypse it is."

The wound was festering and her father was quickly losing his blood to the snow beneath him. Sansa held her weight behind her hands and applied as much pressure as she could to the bullet hole in Ned’s stomach, but her efforts seemed to be in vain. Blood seeped through the gaps between her fingers, staining her skin scarlet.

  
Her brothers were around here somewhere, Robb hunting down the blond boy who’d done it, Jon trying to comfort Bran and Rickon with a touch and a whisper.

  
Sansa made an attempt to apply more pressure to her father’s wound, but her hands slipped in the blood, blood that coursed through her veins. He coughed, allowing a bit of the sanguine liquid to escape from his mouth and catch in his beard. She wiped it with her sleeve.

  
“Sansa,” he whispered, hoarse.

  
She shushed him, cupping his face with her gloved hand.

  
“Sansa,” he whispered again. “Listen to me. I’m dying, Sansa.”

  
“No, Dad, no. Don’t say that,” she croaked, the tears already beginning to well up.

  
“ _Listen_ to me. Your brother, Robb- I love him, but he’s a damned fool. He can be too bullheaded. Listen to your mother, okay? If you want to live in this world-” he broke off to cough again. “Listen to your mother. She knows what she’s doing. And Arya… watch out for her. She’s,” he paused to think and clear his throat. “Volatile.”

  
Sansa nodded, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ll watch out for her and I’ll watch out for the boys and I’ll listen to mom-”

  
“Sansa, don’t cry. You’ve seen too much of this to cry. Please.” He weakly took hold of her collar and pulled her towards him, so that he could kiss her forehead. “Send your brothers over. I love you. Go take watch.”

  
Sansa, nodding, blinked away the tears. She sat with her father for what could have been seconds, or minutes, or an eternity, until he gave a shuddering gasp. She stood and approached Jon, Bran, and Rickon. She gently gestured with her head towards Ned and the boys went to see him. Sansa took position at the only entrance into their snow-ridden camp, shouldering her rifle.

 

They had been here for a month or so, now. It was hard to keep track, but her mother kept a calendar somewhere. Sansa knew she’d mark this day, run her fingers over it every year it passed, if they survived that long.

  
But nothing much had happened in that month until today. They went on runs for supplies, but they hadn’t had any encounters.

  
Then the golden boy swaggered in, claiming their camp acted as a threat to his family’s. Ned stood his ground, refusing to pack up camp. The boy pulled his revolver from his belt loop and shot Ned in the stomach, just once, without warning. “It’s a mercy in this world,” he’d said. “No action goes without its consequences anymore.” Sansa had rushed to Ned, who had crumbled to the snow, clutching his wounded belly. The golden boy, tucking his revolver back in and resting a hand on it, retreated to the camp’s entrance. “Move your camp, or he will only have been the first.” And then he left.

  
No one challenged him, not one of them. No one but Ned, and now he lay bleeding on the freshly fallen snow, face turned up to the pallid sky. Jon had rushed to Bran and Rickon, pulling them close in his arms. Robb watched the blond boy go, watched him disappear into the clouds’ flurries. Then he ran after him, armed with nothing but his pocket knife.

  
“Robb,” Sansa had shouted. “ _Robb_!”

  
He didn’t listen.

  
Robb was gone, Ned was dying, and Arya and Catelyn were nowhere to be found. Arya was _supposed_ to be on watch, but when Catelyn went to relieve her of her post, she was gone, her footprints imprinted in the snow serving as the only intimation that she was ever even there. Catelyn had gone after her, desperate and determined in such a way that only a mother could be.

 

The Starks were in shambles. Rickon’s distant sobbing over the wind’s howls served to remind her of her father’s impending passing. She wanted to cry, but tears didn’t come so easily to her. Not anymore. Her father was right. She’d lost too many in this world: her uncle Benjen, her best friend Jeyne, her sweet, sweet dog, Lady. Sansa rubbed her hands together in an attempt to expel some of the numbness.

  
“- _can’t_ run off like that, Arya! Especially when you’re on watch duty! What if something had happened to you? Can’t you see that we would never know?”

  
“I said I was sorry. But I got some great supplies, and nothing happened to me. I’m fine! Everything is fine!”

  
The pair appeared from behind the wall made of packed snow, branches, and anything sturdy the family could find just as Arya finished her last sentence. Sansa looked up to her younger sister, then to her mother. She shook her head, once.

  
“Not everything.”

  
She turned to face where Jon, Rickon, and Bran knelt, hunched over their father. Catelyn stopped where she stood. Then, she wailed.

- 

The fire crackled and twisted and cast long, flickering shadows across the camp, shadows that reminded Sansa of the infected. They hadn’t had an encounter in a month, and now Ned was gone. _It’s not the dead we need to worry about._

  
Robb had returned not long after Catelyn and Arya, saying he’d lost the golden boy almost instantly. He’d meandered in the woods around the forest and eventually found a tree to stab at with his knife. Then he returned and dug Ned’s grave with Jon. Now, he sat on a camp chair by the flames, grabbing at his auburn curls in rage. Catelyn sat beside him, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the lopsided cross Sansa had fashioned to act as her father’s headstone.

  
“We should move. I can’t bear to look at it every day,” she said, her voice rasping.

  
Sansa nodded, taking a sip of instant coffee from the recycled can she held.

  
“We either have to get away from the guy who did it, or kill him,” Robb muttered, more to the ground than to his family.

  
Arya came over from where she stood on guard duty. “Kill him,” she proposed as she held her hands to the fire.

  
“We don’t know how many people are with him. But we know he’s dangerous.” Sansa stood, setting her can down. “We move. Arya, I’ll take watch now.”

  
Sansa picked up her rifle from where it had been perched against her chair and ambled to the entrance. She stood and briefly looked over her shoulder towards her family, watching the snowflakes catching the light from the fire. The ghost of a smile twitched on her lips; this reminded her of home, of Winterfell.

  
Footsteps crunched in the snow behind her. Sansa jerked her head to face the source to find a silhouette, a bit taller than her, carrying something. It stepped into the light, revealing a boy only a little older than her with curls down to his shoulders. In his arms he carried another person. She looked tiny and frail and ill.

  
“Please help us,” he said hoarsely. “Please help my sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of Marg! There'll be plenty of her next chapter and beyond, though!


	2. Torn

The girl looked like a wilting flower, bundled up in Ned’s sleeping bag and blankets. Sansa had sat with her and her brother, Loras, for two full nights and two full days, wiping the sweat from her brow and keeping her warm.

 

The first night had been the most dangerous. Sansa, without hesitation, ushered the boy with the curls into camp. Robb, however, had not been so trusting. He pulled his pistol from his jeans and angled it towards Loras’s head. Robb’s dog, Grey Wind, bristled and snarled at his side.

“Jon, take his weapons,” Robb had instructed. Jon got up and began to pat the stranger’s legs, in search of any sort of weaponry.

“I don’t have anything,” Loras had said. “Please.”

Jon straightened up and shook his head in confirmation. “He doesn’t have anything.”

Robb reluctantly tucked his pistol back into his jeans. “How did you survive unarmed?”

Loras shifted his weight uncomfortably, adjusting his hold on his sister. “I- I don’t know. Please, help. She’s sick.”

Sansa shuffled closer, kicking up snow as she did so. She squinted at the girl’s face. Later, she would think this the loveliest face she’d seen, but for now, all she could see was how pale and feverish it was. “Has she been bit?”

“No, really. She just has a fever. We come from the South; we’re not used to the cold. She just needs medicine.”

Arya pulled a plastic bottle from the messenger bag she always carried with her. “Guess what I found when I went out?”

For a moment, Loras looked relieved. Then Catelyn, face hard and stoic, advanced to him. She came in close, squinting at the girl’s face just as Sansa had. After a moment’s silence, she gestured to the largest tent in the camp, the one she’d shared with Ned. “Put her in there. There’s a sleeping bag and blankets. Sansa, help him.”

Sansa nodded. “Come on,” she said to Loras. He nodded and she led him to the tent, holding the opening flaps out of his way. He stepped into the tent, shoulders hunched so that his head wouldn’t graze the top. He laid his sister amidst the blankets and pillows and opened the first sleeping bag he found. He unzipped it completely and slipped it around his sister’s feet.

“Can you help me just-” He paused. The boy with the curls had always hated asking for help, especially from strangers. Even more, he hated not being able to offer the aid his sister needed. “-just get this on her?”

Sansa leaned her rifle against one of the tent’s poles from the outside and entered the tent. She bent besides the siblings and pulled the sleeping bag over the sister’s body while Loras held her up.

“What’s her name?” Sansa had asked, settling down to sit besides Loras.

“Margaery,” he answered. “Her name’s Margaery, and I can’t lose her.”

For the rest of the night, they sat in silence, taking turns keeping Margaery comfortable.

 -

The second night, after Arya had left several bottles of pills by Margaery’s side and Loras had nodded off, the feverish girl awoke. It was the heart of the night. The moon stretched towards the center of the sky, just above the camp. The fluorescent city lights that had once bleached the sky had vanished in the midst of the end, and the transient stars peeked through the pollution once more.

Margaery woke with a start, like she’d been having a dream where she was falling, falling, until her subconscious jolted her awake before she hit the ground. Sansa had been dozing, her chin resting on her chest, when the other girl’s sudden inhalation of breath roused her. Sansa flinched in surprise when Margaery sat up abruptly, breathing heavily and blinking rapidly. Her eyes fell on Loras, fast asleep in the corner, and she visibly calmed, if only the slightest bit. Her breathing returned to normal; her shoulders relaxed.

Then her eyes met Sansa’s. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but gave only a raspy, gasping sound. Sansa opened the canteen of water she’d kept by her side for this very occasion and shifted closer to the wary Margaery. She held the canteen to the other girl’s lips, helping her tilt her head astern by holding the back of her lower neck up. She avoided eye contact until Margaery was finished drinking, already incredibly uncomfortable because of the girl’s obvious caution. Sansa replaced the cap on the canteen while Margaery grimaced, clearing her throat.

“Is Loras alright?”

Sansa, feigning interest in the various medicine bottles sprawled around her, smiled to herself. The concern reminded her of her own siblings, when one was sick or injured. “He’s just tired.”

Margaery nodded. She rubbed at her tired eyes. “Who are you?”

“Sansa. Your brother brought you here. I’ve been helping him take care of you.”

Again, Margaery nodded. “I’m Margaery,” she said with a small, cordial smile.

“I know. Loras told me. You’ve been out a long time.”

“How long?” Margaery gathered the blankets that had been bundled around her and bunched them around her legs. She plucked one from the pile and draped it over her shoulders, wrapping herself in it.

“You got here two nights ago.”

“Two nights ago? That long?” Margaery asked. “I’m sorry, I’m all questions tonight.”

Sansa smiled reassuringly. “It’s alright.”

A pause. Margaery watched Sansa with a quirked smile on her face. Sansa fancied it a sweet smile. A smile of nectar and tea and rose petals. A smile of promises for things yet to come.

“You look exhausted. You should get some rest,” Margaery suggested, a touch of concern drifting with her voice.

Sansa rubbed her eyes, sighing. “You’re probably right. You’re okay, though? Do you need anything else?”

Margaery grinned her gentle grin and something tugged and yanked in Sansa’s chest. “I’m okay. Loras and I, we’ll be fine ‘til morning. Go to sleep, Sansa.”

 -

Sansa burrowed into her blankets as quietly as possible, for Arya’s breathing was steady and soft. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the girl she had once loved. The girl she had lost before hell had broken across the world. The girl she had tried so hard to forget. The girl she had feared she _would_ forget.

As Sansa tried to conjure these elusive images, the smile of the girl she had only just met was a constant. It faded in and it faded out almost completely, but it was always there.

She fell asleep quickly, hoping to dream of smiles and laughter and songs. This sort of dream, however, had always been beyond Sansa’s reach.

 

Tonight, she dreamed of the golden boy. She dreamed of his smirk when her father tumbled to the snow. She dreamed of him laughing with his family of golden fools about the _stupid_ man he had killed.

When the golden boy disappeared, she dreamed of her family. She dreamed that they were torn, torn, _torn_ apart by figures that once could have been called humans. She dreamed of their screams and their blood. _Sansa_ , they screamed, _Sansa, please!_

And she awoke, screaming herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! Marg! Talking! Doing things!  
> I guess I'll try to update on Mondays?


	3. Symposiums

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is late! I've been really busy with college applications and junk, so I guess I won't be updating weekly. I'll try to add more as quickly as possible, though. This chapter took a while because I wanted to move the story along but also get some Sansa and Marg time, y'know?

The things that stepped into her sleep had been doing so ever since Sansa was a child. It had started with small, petty things, like massive spiders and monsters lurking in the night’s blackness. They quickly became worse, more twisted. They became illnesses and murders and accidents that killed those she loved.

This, however, was the first time since the start of the end of the world. A surprise, really. Sansa had thought she must have become so adjusted to the bloodshed, so adjusted to the death, that it didn’t affect her anymore.

How wrong she was.

The terrors were back. Back because of Ned. Back because of the boy with the yellow hair and his six-shooter.

With Sansa’s nightmares came sweat, and tears, and blood. Ever since she was a child, Sansa would bite down on her tongue just as she awoke, drawing blood. So she awoke, often drenched in her own perspiration, tears on her cheeks, and the tangy taste of blood riding her tongue. Those who heard her cries came, always. Her mother bathed her, her brothers would make her warm tea. Ned would wash her mouth of blood, and even Arya would come to whisper words of comfort.

 

And when Sansa woke, when Sansa screamed, a distant group of the once-living heard her. Arya was at her side almost instantly, holding her close and whispering her name out of habit. Sansa had always thought that Arya, if she had these nightmares, would attempt to fight her dreams’ demons. She would conjure up a sword from the medieval stories she’d loved so much (or the fantasy stories Sansa loved) and fend off the terrors. _But me? I run._

“C’mon, Sansa, it’s time to get up anyway,” Arya mumbled, helping her sister to her feet.

“I really am sorry about that,” Sansa said as she and Arya exited their tent.

“I know. You’ve said it before. There’s nothing to apologize for.” With a troubled smile, Arya left to eat breakfast by the campfire where Bran, Rickon, and Jon sat. Robb stood vigilant at the camp’s entrance, hand resting on his pistol, Grey Wind curled at his feet.

Sansa started towards Robb, intending to offer to relieve him of his position. As she passed, her siblings around the fire cast somber looks at her. They never come anymore, even when they hear her screaming. _Can’t blame them._

A gun fired. Robb. A hasty boy, always too quick to pull the trigger. Even so, Sansa’s pace quickened to an urgent sprint until she was at Robb’s side, a single corpse sprawled on the snow before him. Grey Wind’s tail was still bristled from the encounter.

“Why’d you shoot it?”

Robb turned to face her. He was breathing heavily and deeply, his chest rising and falling. His sweat-soaked hair was plastered to his forehead and his mouth hung slightly open. “I- It snuck up on me,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“You’re on _watch_ , Robb. You’re supposed to be paying attention. How the hell did it ‘sneak up on you?’”

“I don’t know, Sansa. Fuck! I was just- I was thinking!”

With that, Sansa knew what Robb had been thinking about. They’d always been closer, closer than the auburn Tully locks, a gift from their mother, could indicate. They understood each other.

“He’s gone, Robb, and I miss him too. But nothing you do can change what happened to him. He’d want you to focus, he’d want you do pay attention, so that you can help me protect Bran and Rickon and Arya and Mom.”

“Right. You're right. Sorry.” Robb slid his pistol back into its holster.

“You know they can hear a gunshot from miles away.”

Robb nodded. “I know. I won’t shoot next time.”

“Go eat breakfast,” Sansa said, taking a step forward so as to indicate that she was going to relieve Robb of his station. She watched Robb go, then turned to stare into the woods surrounding the camp. She knew Robb wouldn’t let go of their father’s passing so easily. She knew her mother wouldn’t, either. She didn’t know that the horde of infected that had heard her scream had also heard the gunshot. She didn’t know that they were closer now, and coming all the faster.

 -

Sansa had been standing there for a while, watching as the flies gathered on the nearby corpse. She’d have to remind Robb to burn it later. The crunch of footsteps behind her in the snow was indicative of the arrival of someone. Their delicateness revealed to Sansa that it was her mother before she even turned around.

“Hi,” she breathed, watching as Catelyn pulled something from the inside of her coat. It glinted in the sun. So much so that Sansa had to squint until the glare was gone.

It was Ned’s gun. A pistol, like Robb’s, only a little older and more ornate. Her father had used it in the war, and he’d kept it all this time.

“Don’t _you_ want it?” Sansa gently took it from her mother, turning it over in her hands. She ran her thumb along the swirling embellishments on the barrel.

Catelyn shook her head.

“Why me? Why not Robb or Arya or any of the others?”

Catelyn paused, offering a somber smile. “Your father never liked the idea of you running around with just that rifle and no sidearm.” She reached out and squeezed Sansa’s free hand. Sansa understood then that it was more than just her deceased father’s concern for her safety. It was an indication of trust.

And then the horde was upon them.

 -

She heard the moaning first, deep and guttural. It was barely audible, the throng still distant, but it was clearly the collective moans of many. Catelyn, still standing at Sansa’s side, responded instantly.

“Pack your things,” she said. “Get Loras and his sister, as well. Go!”

Sansa was off. She heard Catelyn calling for Robb behind her. Sansa burst into her tent and fell to her knees, already stuffing her sleeping bag and blankets into her backpack of belongings. It was just the one bag; the Starks had learned to travel light.

When her bag was full, Sansa left the tent, nearly colliding into Arya as she did so.

“What’s going on?”

“Just pack,” Sansa answered. “Quickly.” With that, she took her leave of her sister and ducked into the tent where Loras and Margaery slept.

She shook the girl awake. Margaery opened her eyes and rolled over to look up at Sansa, grinning all the while. “Hey, hey, we have to go. I’ll explain later. Think you’re okay to walk?”

Margaery, without a moment’s hesitation, nodded. “Yeah, sure.” She nudged Loras with her foot. “Loras, get up!”

Loras woke with a start and rubbed his tired eyes in confusion as Margaery concisely told him what was going on. With Sansa’s instruction, he began to pack the blankets and sleeping bags into one of the backpacks lying around the tent.

Sansa offered her hand to Margaery, who took it in order to hoist herself up. When she straightened up, her face was a few mere inches from Sansa’s. She could feel the other girl’s breath on her skin. “I- Come on.” Sansa held Margaery’s gaze for just one more second before turning on her heel, adjusting her backpack strap, and leading the other girl out of the tent.

Outside, Rickon and Bran were running wildly from tent to tent, deconstructing them all as quickly as they could while Robb and Jon broke a hole in the makeshift wall that protected the makeshift home. Arya and Catelyn were packing supplies by the campfire. Loras stepped out of the tent just as Bran and Rickon came over to take it apart.

They finished just as the first entered the camp.

“ _Go_!” Robb shouted. He ushered Arya and Catelyn through the hole first, after waiting for them to run to him.

With a final glance to the lopsided cross that marked her father’s grave, Sansa ducked through the hole, followed closely by Margaery.

 -

Sansa guessed it must have been three hours and twelve minutes before they got to the highway. It was littered with cars and debris, but it seemed clear of the infected. They’d seen it from a hill back in the woods, and Jon had suggested that they look to see if any of the cars had keys in the ignition. Jon had always had a talent with cars, anyway, so it was likely he could hotwire one.

Their trek had been very quiet and very boring, save for the times Margaery’s hand brushed Sansa’s or the times they made brief eye contact. Or the time Margaery, still slightly disoriented from her illness, stumbled and tripped. Sansa had caught her hand in one of hers, and supported her back with the other. Margaery had whispered a breathless thanks, and that was that.

Sansa dumped her bag on the side of the road where Bran and Rickon sat, by the order of their mother. She started weaving her way through the cars and down the road. She heard the patter of delicate footsteps on the pavement behind her and turned to see Margaery slowly approaching. Sansa paused, waiting for Margaery to get within a few feet of her.

“I never got to thank you for helping me and Loras. Not many would do that, these days,” she said, leaning against the shell of a rusted, old car.

“I couldn’t just leave you to die out there. There’s so much,” Sansa trailed off, sighing. “Death.”

“Well, it was very kind and very, _very_ brave of you.”

“It wasn’t really all that brave.”

“Oh, it was, Sansa. Braver than you know,” Margaery said, her lips curling into that smile of hers.

A blush powdered Sansa’s face as she tugged at the hem of her coat. The other girl watched in her silence, her smirk never once cracking.

“Can I ask you something?”

Sansa looked up at Margaery, who was now seated on the hood of the old car. “Uh, yeah, sure, go ahead.”

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping any boundaries and please just say if you don’t want to answer.” Margaery took a moment to clear her throat, during which Sansa climbed onto the hood of the car as well. “Your whole family seems rather somber. Why is that?”

Sansa hesitated. _Why does she care? Does she think she’ll be able to fix it?_

“Sorry, that was probably a stupid question. It’s the apocalypse, I know. You just seem so unhappy.” Margaery’s little finger had moved so that it touched Sansa’s, the soft skin a warm comfort in contrast to the frigid metal of the car. Sansa doubted that Margaery even noticed the contact.

“No, it’s not- my father, my father just died.”

It worried Sansa that her voice didn’t crack when she said this, that there was no bite of pain in her chest. No tears threatened to spill through her eyelashes; no void of insatiable loneliness swallowed her heart.

Nothing.

And this, perhaps, worried Margaery more. Her fingers crawled over Sansa’s so that her hand was on top of hers, but she remained silent. Sansa stared at her sneakers, counting every loose stitch, every fray on the shoelaces, and Margaery watched her all the while.

Arya’s voice pierced the silence, cutting it to shreds with its abruptness. “Hey, guys, Jon got a couple of cars working.” Sansa pulled her hand out from under Margaery’s as soon as she heard her sister’s voice.

Margaery, not slighted by Sansa’s movement in the least, turned to introduce herself to Arya, who simply muttered her name before leaving.

A minute or two of silence passed before Margaery slid down the hood onto the cracked pavement of the abandoned highway. “Come on, Sansa, your family’s waiting,” she said, offering her hand. Sansa took it, and allowed Margaery to gingerly coax her off the car.

 -

The sun had just brushed the horizon when the sniffling girl stirred in the passenger’s seat of the dented sedan Sansa was driving. Loras, Bran, and Rickon were piled together in the backseat, all fast asleep. Glancing at them briefly through the rearview mirror, Sansa smirked. The boys had taken a liking to Loras. She guessed they were impressed by his story of trekking through the wilderness, unsafe and unarmed, with no one but his sister to keep him company.

Margaery yawned and stretched in her seat, turning to face Sansa. Sansa looked over for a moment, then kept her eyes fixed on the car ahead of her, where her mother, Robb, Arya, and Jon were.

“Morning,” Sansa said, a smile tugging on the corner of her lips. “Mornin’,” Margaery replied in a voice still thick from sleep. “Evening? Evening.”

Sansa exhaled with a breathless laugh. “The sun’s setting.”

Margaery adjusted herself so that she now sat up straight in order to get a better view of the skies. “So it is.”

Sansa dragged her eyes off the road for a moment so that they found Margaery’s profile, delineated with the sun’s beams. “Hey,” Sansa said, turning her attention back to the road that stretched and sprawled before them. “What did you do before this? I mean, you and your brother had nothing to defend yourselves with, no supplies, so I figured you must have, like, done something with survival. Like camping.”

Margaery laughed, then. “Camping? No, I’ve never been camping. I was in college, majoring in political science. I’m a bit of a literature nerd, though. I was studying Greek mythology- really fascinating stuff. Sorry, I’m gonna start rambling.”

“No, go on.” When Margaery didn’t, Sansa looked at her again. Margaery had been watching her with a mask of skepticism on her face, and her grin clearly itching to stretch across her cheeks once more. “Really! I don’t have anything better to listen to,” Sansa insisted, turning her attention back to the road.

“Fine, well, the Greeks believed that the Gods initially designed us with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. But Zeus, fearing their power, would then split them into two separate entities, leaving them to spend their entire lives searching for their other half. It's very interesting.”

“And do you believe that? Not the Zeus thing or whatever, but the whole notion of kindred spirits.”

“I think I just appreciate the sentiment. It’s lovely, but soulmates?” She shrugged. “What about you?”

“I’d like to,” Sansa said. “But I-” she broke off. She pulled her father’s pistol from where it rested on her seat and offered it to Margaery, grip first. “Here,” she whispered. “Take it.”

Margaery obeyed cautiously, running her fingers over the gun’s embellishments just as Sansa had. “Why?”

Sansa shrugged. “In case something happens,” she said. “It was my father’s, but I already have a gun.”

“Your father’s.” Margaery held the pistol out in a futile attempt to return it. “Sansa, no, keep it. It was _your father’s_. It must mean something to you and your family, right?”

Sansa shrugged. “Well, you’re gonna stick around for a while, right? So, keep it safe.”

Margaery hesitated before finally resting the firearm on the dashboard. She smiled to herself as she watched the trees that spread by the side of the road roll by. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll stick around.”


	4. Winter Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to get to! I've been doing college apps and dealing with a terrible bout of writer's block. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to get there. I guess we're finally getting to some good stuff, though!

Two days after Margaery’s promise, the snow had melted and left mud in its wake. They’d done nothing but sleep and travel those past two days, but even by car it was slow going. The highways and even the backroads were congested with either abandoned or broken down vehicles.

As the sun began to settle into the horizon on that second day, a particularly occluded segment of the highway forced Jon to take a detour off-road and into the muddy banks that flanked the street. Margaery, who had taken over Sansa’s driving duties when she noticed her yawning, made an attempt to follow, but Jon’s car had abruptly stopped, its wheels throwing mud all around.

“Shit,” Jon said, climbing out of the driver’s seat. He inspected the car’s back tires; two inches of the rubber were completely submerged in muck. “Goddammit.”

Margaery stepped out of the mud-free car, leaning against the open door. "Stuck?"

Jon sighed in frustration, nodding over his shoulder. "Yeah," he said. "We're not getting through this."

As Jon went to break the news to Catelyn, Robb, and Arya, Margaery walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. She gently shook Sansa awake. "Hey," she said softly, when the girl blinked her weary eyes open. "Looks like we're walking."

Sansa groaned and begrudgingly swung her legs out of the car, hauling herself out as Margaery opened the back door to wake up the boys.

-

The family and their companions agreed to continue on through the woods that bordered the street, deciding that it was more likely to run into undead corpses that hadn’t moved from their cars since their deaths than it was to find them roaming amongst dead or dying trees. Sansa was walking alongside her sister, humming the tune of a song she’d known a thousand years ago.

The clumsy crinkling of dead leaves cut her off. The noise was distinctly different from the sound of a human (that is, one who is in complete control of their body) trekking through the woods. No, this was certainly something different. Something far worse.

Sansa turned to look behind her, where Bran and Rickon were walking, laughing at something the youngest Stark had said. The infected were swarming them. How did they go from no encounters in a month to two in the span of a few days?

"Infected," Arya breathed, taking Sansa by the wrist. " _Infected_!"

It seemed like they were everywhere, swarming the family like flies on a corpse. Sansa looked behind her just in time to see Bran collide into an infected blond man. He tripped and fell in a tangle of his own limbs, crying out in pain.

Sansa wheeled around, running back towards her fallen brother. The blond figure was already bent over him, grabbing, nearly tearing, at his clothes. She stopped abruptly, too stunned to continue any farther. _Bran’s gone? Just like that?_

But then the blond man was hoisting Bran onto his shoulders. “The things I do for love. Goddamn it, Cersei,” Sansa heard him mutter to himself before carrying her younger brother in the same direction her family was headed. “Don’t just stand there, c’mon,” he said as he passed Sansa.

Sansa obeyed, stumbling as she struggled to keep up with the stranger. Gunshots rang around the forest and in Sansa’s skull. Robb and Jon had their pistols out and were firing at their attackers, and Sansa thought she saw Margaery shoot once or twice.

Sansa panicked when she felt a firm hand grab her by the arm. She looked over her shoulder, only to find herself face to face with the decaying remains of a moaning woman. Its head was immediately cleaved in two by a well-placed axe, the corpse falling to reveal the scarred, blood-splattered face of the man wielding the weapon. He moved on to the next assailant, lodging his hatchet deep into the back of its skull. Sansa glanced past him; dozens of infected were falling to a group of men who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The blond man chuckled. “I was wondering if you’d ever show up,” he called to the men, some of whom answered with a grunt. He then quickened his pace, ordering the Starks to follow him as he passed.

-

The bed of the pickup truck was crowded and unstable, but fairly warm. Sansa sat scrunched between Margaery and the back of the cab, trying to ignore how her breath seemed to be stolen from her whenever the other girl bundled the tiniest bit closer. Sansa watched the barren trees roll by as she listened to fragments of the conversation her mother was having with the man who had introduced himself as Jaime.

“And that one there, the one who’s driving, that’s Barristan. In there with him is Mandon. Out here, then, we’ve got Arys and Osmund. Oh, and I nearly forgot Sandor here,” he said, clapping the bulky man beside him on the shoulder. “We call him the Hound, though. Why is that again? Oh, right, because you’re so obedient, just like a good little dog, eh?” He nudged the scarred man with his elbow jokingly. When Sandor offered nothing but a grimace, Jaime’s smile suddenly faded and his eyes grew serious. “But I’ve found that our stories are far more telling than our names. Tell me, then, friends: why are you wandering the woods? Where are you going?”

It was Robb who answered. “Anywhere else.”

-

The truck jerked to a halt in front of several, fenced in brick buildings. The fences were supported by thick planks of wood, old doors, and other sturdy scraps of unidentifiable bits and pieces. A tall, rusting gate creaked open and the truck continued through it, pulling up and finally parking beside the largest of the buildings. Jaime was the first out of the truck's bed, tossing his assault rifle to a young boy with hair just as golden as his own. “Catelyn, was it? Come see my sister with me.” As Catelyn went off with Jaime, Jon and Robb helped Bran out of the truck, who was injured from his fall, and asked for directions to an infirmary.

Sansa sat at the very edge of the truck bed, taking in her surroundings. They were in an old apartment complex, called King’s Landing according to a sun-bleached sign outside the fence, on the main road. Several men and women, armed to the teeth, stood on makeshift scaffolding along the fence, patrolling the borders. Others, including children and people her own age, wandered around the complex, talking and playing and laughing. There was a sense of safety here. Normalcy. And, at least to Sansa, unfamiliarity.

Margaery approached, pausing by the truck’s left tail light. “Hey,” she said, voice as soft as her smile.

“Hey.” Sansa squinted up at the other girl, the sun hanging just above her head.

“May I?” Margaery gestured to the space besides Sansa.

“Oh,” Sansa said. “Yeah, of course.”

Margaery sat down, her feet dangling above the ground. They sat like that for a while, occasionally commenting on or laughing at something they saw around them, until they fell into a comfortable silence. Margaery swung her feet over the pavement, stealing a glance at Sansa and the way the sun seemed to set her hair ablaze.

Sansa noticed the other girl watching her in the edge of her vision. By the time she had turned to meet her gaze, Margaery's eyes had begun to wander around the complex again, occasionally catching on something so reminiscent of the old world that it seemed abnormal and strange in this new one. Sansa's eyes journeyed Margaery's face, mapping every detail, every freckle, every line etched around her eyes when she smiled, until they finally fell to her lips.

_I want to kiss her_ , Sansa realized with a blush. Margaery seemed to sense the heat of Sansa's flushing gaze, for she turned and grinned at the younger girl. Sansa had to forcibly drag her eyes up and away from Margaery's lips to make eye contact.

“It's strange, isn't it? All this," she paused, inhaling as she waved a hand around at the complex. "Normality."

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. Like that guy over there, walking his dog. Like nothing ever happened. Like no one _died_ ," Sansa answered, a little bit of spite bleeding into her last sentence.

Margaery reached over and gently took Sansa's hand in her own without looking at her. "It's almost kind of sad. With all the shit that's going down outside, they're living with the greatest kind of fear: denial. They're living in the normal world while the rest of us fend for ourselves out there."

Though Margaery's words seemed vindictive, she had said them with the quietest, tenderest of voices, one with a sad sort of envy.

“I'm sorry, I- I understand them completely. I just wish we could have lived like this before we started losing people. Before you lost your father," Margaery whispered, squeezing Sansa's hand at her final word.

Sansa exhaled heavily, grateful for Margaery's hand keeping her own steady, as she knew it would be violently shaking.

“Do you think we would have met? In the normal world. Do you think our paths would have crossed?" Sansa smiled down towards her lap at the question.

“Maybe in, like, a mall or a park or something. Probably nothing significant," she said, squinting back up at the winter sun as she answered.

“That's one good thing to come of this, then," Margaery said. She slid off the bed of the truck, untangling their hands, as Rickon and Arya approached, followed closely by their two dogs. Sansa prayed her younger siblings wouldn't notice the slight pink blush she knew was dusting her cheeks.

“How's your brother?" Margaery leaned down to stroke Nymeria's ears. The dog licked at her face, causing Margaery to scrunch up her nose in mock disgust.

“He, uh, sprained his ankle on one leg and broke his knee on the other. He's on crutches, so we're gonna stay here for a while," Arya said, more to Sansa than to Margaery.

 “Shit, the fall was worse than it looked, then. Is he okay? I mean, is he in pain?" Sansa asked, sliding off the truck with a satisfying crunch when her boots met with what remained of the rapidly disappearing snow.

Arya shrugged. "I dunno. He seemed fine. He fell asleep, so," she trailed off, leaning over to grab her backpack from the truck. "C'mon, Sansa, we're sharing an apartment. Jaime's waiting to take us there."

-

The sun had fallen when a knock at the apartment's door woke Sansa in an unfamiliar bed. She ran a hand through her hair, yawning. Arya must have left, because the apartment was empty and cold. Sansa dragged her tired bones to the edge of the bed and the visitor knocked again, more impatiently. "Just a second," Sansa called. She stood and stumbled toward the door, wiping her eyes. She released the chain and unlocked the deadbolt, wrenching the door open. She squinted at the sudden light that filtered in from the hallway.

"So it _is_ you," the visitor said, leaning against the doorframe. He put his hands on his hips, pushing back his jacket to expose a gleaming pistol tucked into a holster. "I was wondering if I'd ever see you again." With that, he left, taking his alarmingly snide tone down the hall with him.

He was the golden boy.

 

Sansa stood there, holding the door open. The boy who killed her father walked these halls. The boy who killed her father lived _so close_ to the rest of her family. She was gasping for air, locking her arm against the doorknob to keep herself standing. She staggered into the hall, heart pounding against her rib cage, threatening to crack it. She hesitantly knocked on the door across the corridor, then knocked louder, more urgently. The door pulled away and opened to Margaery, bundled in an oversized teal sweater.

"Sansa?" She asked, voice dripping with concern.   

"I- sorry, I thought this was my mom's room-"

"Sansa, what's wrong? You're shaking."

Sansa wiped at her eyes with her sleeves, hoping she wasn't crying. Margaery tenderly pulled Sansa's hands away from her face and held them in front of her. "Sansa," she whispered.

Sansa took a shaky breath. "The boy who killed my dad is here. He just knocked on my door and-"  

She broke down, tears beginning to break over her eyelashes and spill down her cheeks. _It almost feels good to cry_.

"Come inside," Margaery said, leading a cracked Sansa to a couch in the middle of the room. She sat her down and took her place beside her. Sansa fell into Margaery, trembling fingers picking at the teal sweater. "We can't stay here," Margaery whispered as she held a crying, breaking girl against her.

  
  
  
  
  



	5. Like Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I discovered I've had chapter five written for a long time and I totally forgot about it. Sorry! It's not very good, but at least it's something. As I said in a comment I posted yesterday, my life's been changing rapidly, which includes heading off to college, so I've been very busy. I'll work on this when I can, though.

Sansa woke to the screaming of a tea kettle and frantic, hushed voices. She sat up on the couch, where someone had draped a blanket over her, and ran a hand through her red hair.

"No, Loras, he didn't just die. He was killed by-" Margaery looked over to see Sansa very much awake. "Okay, she's awake."

Loras was leaning on the kitchen counter. Margaery was on the other side, pouring three mugs of tea. "I'll get out of here, then." He pushed himself off the counter, taking a mug of tea as Margaery offered it to him. "Morning, Sansa," he said, leaving the apartment.

Sansa wiped her eyes as Margaery sat besides her on the couch, the other two steaming mugs in each hand. "Sorry," Sansa said, taking the offered cup of tea. "I didn't realize I fell asleep. I didn't mean to impose."

"You haven't," Margaery said with a smile, crossing her legs and facing the other girl. "I didn't want to wake you up, anyway. You must have been exhausted."

Sansa nodded, blowing slightly on the tea to cool it down. She looked around the apartment. It was identical to hers, only now there was that winter sunlight spilling over the floorboards.

"I spoke to your mother and Robb about leaving. They said we can't go until Bran's legs heal, but it's dangerous, if that boy is here."

"If? You don't believe me?"

"Of course I do. I just don't know who he is."

Sansa took in a sharp breath and released it slowly. "I think he lives in this building. He has blond hair, like Jaime's. He's about our age. And his face- he's got this look to him. Like he's always so proud of himself. Smug."

Margaery paused. "I met someone like that this morning. Joffrey, I think." She took a sip from her own mug. "Dammit, he seemed so charming- almost chivalrous."

Sansa twirled a fraying string from the blanket between her fingers. "That's somehow scarier."

Margaery rested her free hand on Sansa's knee, rubbing it with her thumb. "We'll figure out a way to get Bran out safely, and we'll go. Alright?"

"Alright."

-  
Sansa sat outside their building on a park bench, waiting for Margaery. The older girl had suggested that they walk around the complex in search of ways to escape without anyone noticing, for Sansa had the sinking feeling that someone like Joffrey wouldn't let them out so easily.

The bench's wood was slightly rotted and warped. The copper that made up its arms and frame had oxidized and turned green. It reminded Sansa of a bench in Winterfell, where she had shared her first kiss with the daughter of her father's friend. A silent smile made its way onto Sansa's face as she rubbed the green metal with her thumb, remembering that snowy day.

Sansa looked up at the sound of two pairs of footsteps. The sun shone high above the two figures' heads, and she couldn't make out who they were, until she heard them speaking.

Cruel laughter. "I'll do it later, Uncle. Now, if you'll excuse me," a terribly, terribly familiar voice said. The taller figure, which Sansa now recognized as Jaime, continued down the sidewalk, sneering at his companion's back as he walked away. The other was Joffrey, and he was striding straight towards Sansa.

He sat besides her, saying nothing until he had gotten comfortable. As Jaime was still within earshot, his original tone of voice was strangely courteous. "I think I forgot to properly introduce myself last night. My name's Joffrey," he trailed off while he watched Jaime round the corner down the block. Sansa, unsure of what to do, remained silent and tried her hardest to ignore the golden boy. "Do you miss dear, old Dad?"

Sansa found her nails digging into the heels of her palms.

"Did he die right away, or did it take a bit longer? Was it painful? Did you watch his blood turn the snow red? Did you-" 

He was cut off by someone suddenly standing by Sansa's side of the bench. "Good to see you again, Joffrey," Margaery said, smiling down at him.

"Oh." Joffrey cleared his throat and stood up. Sansa followed suit, finding that she had quite a few inches on the boy. "Hey, Margaery. I was intro-"

"Sansa and I were just about to take a walk."

"Let me show you around, then," Joffrey said, holding out his arm for Margaery to take.

Margaery feigned a flattered smile. “Not this time, Joffrey.” She turned and offered her arm to Sansa just as Joffrey had.

Sansa took it and allowed Margaery to begin to lead her off, until she suddenly felt a sort of pride plant itself in her chest, and when it blossomed and spread throughout her body, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the golden boy. “It was lovely talking to you,” she said. She could almost _hear_ the sound of Joffrey’s ego cracking like glass.

Margaery led Sansa down the sidewalk away from Joffrey, who stood there clenching his fists till his knuckles were white.


End file.
